CSC, NHS extend jaw-jaw on disaster deal: 500 jobs go

Fail to reach deal over twitching corpse of Lorenzo

The NHS and IT contractor CSC can't agree on the terms of their amputated contract so have pushed a decision on the deal back two months, leaving a temporary arrangement in place.

CSC's deal to digitise patient records – Project Lorenzo – was finally scuppered in December last year and CSC has paid back £1.8bn to the NHS after it failed to deliver the package. However, sorting out what's left and how much it's going to cost is taking a long time to hash out.

The two sides planned to have had the renegotiated deal tied up by 31 March, but a statement released by CSC on Wednesday informed investors that the decision will now take until 1 June to hash out.

The delay wasn't down to stalemate, CSC Global Healthcare President Guy Hains said in a conference call on 4 April, but negotiations were complex:

I can report the dialogue with the NHS is fundamentally going well. Both parties continue to see considerable merit in the revised structure we agreed in the [letter of intent]. I would say the delay reflects the complexity of change being undertaken and the need for very detailed agreements

One result of the reduced contract is job losses: 30 per cent of CSC's workers on the NHS project have been made redundant. The cuts amount to 500 IT workers in the UK.